Nichole Sobecki

Nichole Sobecki is the 2016 Galloway Family Foundation Reporting Fellow and worked for The GroundTruth Project to investigate climate change issues in Somalia. Nichole worked previously for Agence France-Presse producing regular video and photo features, and coordinating their video coverage of East Africa. She was the Turkey Correspondent for GlobalPost from 2008-2011, based in Istanbul, Turkey. During that time she also covered the early days of the Libyan uprising, the ongoing war in Afghanistan, developmental challenges facing Nepal, and the aftermath of the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. In 2007 Nichole worked for the Daily Star, Lebanon’s English language newspaper based in Beirut. She studied political science at Tufts University and photography at the International Center of Photography and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. Her work has appeared in publications including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, National Geographic, Newsweek, Time, Foreign Policy, The Financial Times, The Guardian, GlobalPost, and Le Monde.Through the generous support of the Galloway Family Foundation, GroundTruth’s reporting in Africa was carried out over the last 18 months by the GroundTruth-Galloway reporting fellow Nichole Sobecki and will culminate this month with an ABC News Special Report on May 29 and a lead article published in Foreign Policy for the June issue.

With funding of $65,000 from the Galloway Family Foundation, which is now completed, Sobecki has done outstanding, in-depth reporting on how increased droughts in sub-Saharan Africa exacerbate migration and conflict in the region. The agreed upon grant period was December 2015 to December 2016 and this project has continued on into 2017 and been supported through other accompanying grants from foundations, including the MacArthur Foundation and the JMB Charitable Trust. The combination of funds has helped support the most intensive project that GroundTruth has ever undertaken and a period of field reporting, editing and production which stretches over 18 months. Sobecki’s reporting took her from Somaliland, Puntland in Somalia and to Dadaab in Kenya as well as Paris for COP21, Morocco for COP22 and on to London, New York and Washington to interview experts. Local Somali journalists, interpreters as well as risk and safety experts have also assisted in Sobecki in her work. Through this extensive reporting journey, Sobecki has investigated how climate change is pushing one of the world’s most resilient communities to the brink. And her reporting is culminating at a time when the security risks in Somalia to the US are mounting and taking an increasing toll with a stepped up US troops presence in the country in recent months.

On April 22, Earth Day, this year, Sobecki’s photography along with the written work of her teammate and writer Laura Heaton was published on The GroundTruth Project website and distributed for publication to numerous editorial partners. The work can be seen here:

The Special Report includes the work of sixteen reporting fellows who have conducted field reporting in 2016 and 2017 related to climate change, including Nichole’s, and serve as a platform for national news outlets to link to.